Our text opens with a very confusing statement: "Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, 'Abraham!' 'Here I am,' he replied" (v. 1).

You need to know that the word "test" here does not mean to tempt to do wrong, but to test so that we can do right. The Hebrew word nawsaw means to test and prove something, to show that it is so. God is going to give Abraham a faith test. And he will pass it with flying colors.

Here it is: "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about" (v. 2).

Abraham had waited 25 years for this son. When he was born God had promised his father, "it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned" (Genesis 21:12). And now God tells this elderly man, more than 110 years old, to sacrifice him to God.

"Go the region of Moriah," to Mt. Moriah. This is the most significant single mountain in the world today. Where Abraham offered Isaac, David later offered sacrifice to God on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite (2 Samuel 24:17-19). And so Solomon, David's son, built his Temple here and made this rock at the top of this mountain his Holy of Holies (2 Chronicles 3:1).

Today this rock is enshrined in the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim structure completed in AD 691. It is the holiest spot on earth to the Jews, and third holiest to the Muslims. They both want it. And the Middle East conflict which rages today all comes down to it.

But long before all of that, a conflict raged here in the heart of an old man. He is to "sacrifice" his son here, to slit his throat and burn his body. To give up his beloved child, his heir and legacy and future, everything that matters to him. To give it all to God.

And he does. He and Isaac get up early the next morning and travel by foot more than 40 miles over three days. He climbs up this mountain with him, and lays his bound son on this altar, knife high in the air. How can he do it?

Because he trusts God. Not just with his religion, but with his life. Not just with what he can spare, but with his best. He knows that whatever he gives to God, God will bless. He trusts God.

Hebrews 11:19 says, "Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death." He knew that if God wanted him to sacrifice this son, God could raise him back to life. God could still keep his promises and make him his heir. God could do whatever God wants to do.

You see it in his promise to his servants: "We will worship and then we will come back to you" (v. 5). And they did.

You see it in his promise to Isaac: "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son" (v. 8). And he did, giving Abraham the ram which replaced his son on the altar of worship.

Abraham trusts God with his best, and God does more with it than Abraham ever could.

He makes this one child the father of the Hebrew people. Through his descendants God brings his own Son, who dies on his own sacrificial wood as our sin offering to God.

And now because of what God did through Isaac, Abraham's seed, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:28-29). Through Abraham's child we are all God's children. All because he gave his best to God, and God blessed it and is using it still today.

So, how do we join those people Gallup called "highly spiritually committed?" How do we get beyond the spiritual-secular chasm in our culture, and find God's power and God's purpose in all we do? How do we live at peace in this hectic, high stress, burned out, sleep-deprived society?

We do what Abraham did. We let God run our lives—every part of them. We put our families on his altar, ask him how to love them and raise them and help them, and do what he says. We put our friends on his altar, and our finances on his altar, and our futures on his altar. We put our best abilities and our worst failures on his altar. We put ourselves where Abraham put his son. We give our lives to God.

Romans 12 is the New Testament commentary on our text. Hear these familiar words in a new way, through Eugene Peterson's translation, The Message: "Here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you" (emphasis mine). "Take your everyday, ordinary life—and place it before God as an offering." Do it today.